2018 best of #1

Some shots from last winter.....................

Some late February raptors............

There were quite a few White-tailed Eagles east of town today..................

Playing the percentages..........

The snow is so deep that we gave up going to Onuma and headed east yet again where we know that a) the weather and roads are mysteriously much better and b) there are a handful eagles more or less guaranteed..........

Another snowbound Sunday...........

Another week of snow.................

Eagle trio

We headed east on Sunday................

A couple of raptors

A Mountain Hawk Eagle east of town a couple of days ago.....................

3 eagles

A rather frustrating Sunday afternoon............................

A roadside surprise

A Mountain Hawk Eagle in Yakumo today.............

New Year in Yakumo #1

A Mountain Hawk Eagle in Yakumo yesterday...............

The merest hint of spring

A Temincks Cormorant and Glaucous Winged Gull at Menagawa this afternoon, note that they are both in breeding plumage, it must be spring.

Well it has got above freezing this last week but there was another heavy snowfall yesterday.

There were lots of Glaucous Winged Gull on the coast.

I wanted to show Franck (a French birder who used to live in south Hokkaido) the Pine Bunting and Rough Legged Buzzards but we couldn't find either, maybe the snow drove them south. We did however see a couple of Mountain Hawk Eagles high in the sky.........

Here is one with a Black Kite..........

Other stuff included Peregrine, Common Buzzard, White Tailed Eagle, Brent Goose, Harlequin Duck, Whooper Swan and the usual common winter species. At Onuma we tried to find a Naumanns Thrush which Franck had photographed yesterday, no luck there. The Pintail was still present as were the Smew (11 now) as well as Goosander and Goldeneye but no chance of decent photos, the Smew were too far away and the Pintail was too close.............

The Ural Owl was dozing in its hole.

Not much in town last week, there were individual Grey Heron and Great Egret on the river.

And lots of Dusky Thrush still...........

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On this day (January 31st)............

January 31st 2010.

A Mountain Hawk Eagle at Yakumo.

One of my dreams is to publish a book of exotic bird species crapping. This one would be in it for sure.

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More wintry stuff

A bit of a short entry today, I'm a bit tired and there's loads of footy on the TV.

A quick look at Yakumo this afternoon. I was expecting another eaglefest but there didn't seem to be so many as last week, where did they all go?

A lot did seem to be hiding in the snowladen trees..........like these adult Stellers Sea Eagles.

It was snowing yet again with very grey skies but I did manage a few BIFs, like this young White Tailed Eagle.

To complete the eagle set (well 3 out of 4, no Golden Eagles which are very rare in Hokkaido) here's a distant Mountain Hawk Eagle...................

The usual winter stuff was present including Rook and Daurian Jackdaw, here's one of the latter........both these usually rather scarce species of crow seem to be not so scarce this winter........

And this was a Great Egret at Onuma earlier in the day...........

Not a lot of colour today then...............hopefully I'll find some more Waxwings in Hakodate this week.

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Lots of good stuff to end the month........

Two of today's star birds, a drake Long Tailed Duck at Oshamanbe and a Mountain Hawk Eagle tucking into some salmon at Yakumo.

The latter is a scarce bird in Hokkaido and is only the second one I've ever seen. It has very thick powerful talons and it looks like it doesn't take s**t from anyone. The local Crows left it well alone (something they don't need to do with the bigger Stellers and White Tailed Eagles). The above photo was taken with a 1.4 teleconverter as was this video.........

This video was cropped and downsized, for the full HD version go here.

I still haven't quite got the hang of liveview, this video with DSLR lark is tricky to master as is editing it on the PC.

To be honest the jury is still out on the 7D/100-400L combo when used with a teleconverter and I took it off, these shots below are without.

It was by the side of the road and attracted several folk with large expensive lenses. We spent part of the afternoon with 'dotetin' (blog linked on the right) and although the Hawk Eagle was the top bird on show today the usual stuff was still around. Not many BIFs today...........here is an adult Stellers Sea Eagle in a tree instead.

As you can see we finally had some decent weather, after a whole month with only a couple of half days with blue skies.

I got several blurry out of focus shots of Crested Kingfisher, other stuff upstream included White Tailed Eagle, Jay, Brown Dipper, Japanese Wagtail, Goldeneye, Whooper Swan and Goosander.

Lots of Rooks around today. Near Onuma, just outside Yakumo and this one in a supermarket car park in Hakodate.

Rooks are a scarce winter visitor in northern Japan.

After Yakumo we headed up to Oshamanbe and the Long Tailed Ducks (well 3 of them) were in the harbour.

Other ducks in the harbour included several Wigeon. One of the drakes had a green crescent on its head, was this a hybrid with an American Wigeon? I didn't get a decent shot of it, it looked just like a regular Wigeon otherwise............

Lots of Goldeneye and Scaup..........

Lots of Glaucous and Glaucous Winged Gulls around, here's an adult Glaucous Gull.

The weather took a turn for the worse and sleet turned to snow on the drive home. The forecast for next week is very bad, well below zero all week and more snow so we got really lucky this morning........

I got drunk and fell asleep on the sofa watching Liverpool v Bolton last night. i'll stay up late tonight to watch the Man U v Arsenal game. A tough one to decide who I want to win, I dislike them both.............but I'd rather a northern team with a few English players won tonight's game. Having said that I'll despair if Man U win the league again (god that means I hope Chelsea do it).